Once again, fans and modders are doing the work that Nintendo won’t. This time it’s a new tool, out now, that lets anyone quickly and easily make custom Super Mario 64 levels and share them with friends online.
2015's Super Mario Maker and its 2019 Switch sequel are incredibly popular games, letting anyone make and share good (or horrible) 2D Mario levels. However, ever since Mario Maker 2's release, many have wanted Nintendo to develop and launch a 3D spin on the formula, maybe called, I don’t know, something like Super Mario Maker 3D. Just spitballing here. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen anytime soon. But don’t worry, there’s a new Super Mario 64 mod that basically turns the classic platformer into Super Mari0 64 Maker.
On May 19, modder and fan developer Rovertronic released Mario Builder 64, a new mod for the original Super Mario 64 game that lets you build your own levels using easy-to-use menus and controls. Watching the mod in action, it looks as good as something officially made by Nintendo.
Setting up Mario Builder 64 isn’t as easy as just putting Mario Maker 2's cart into your Switch and hitting play, but luckily there is a full guide on getting the mod up and running that will walk you through the steps. You’ll also need an emulator to play the levels and your own SM64 rom. Mario Builder 64 doesn’t include the original game, to avoid the ire of Nintendo’s very watchful lawyers.
Once you’ve got it all up and running, Mario Builder 64 is intuitive and impressively well-made. If I had never played Super Mario 64 and was shown this mod in action, I might just believe it shipped with the original game back in the ‘90s. It’s really that good! Even better, Mario Builder 64 features some new content that isn’t found in the original N64 game, so you can make stuff not possible in the classic platformer.
People are already making cool levels and sharing them online. I’ve also seen people just putting like 30 Bowsers into a giant pool of water and letting Mario suffer. So yeah, this thing seems pretty dang cool.
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